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VAIDIC AUTHORITY FOR THE
quoted as authority for the burning of the widow, is no such thing, “it rather discountenances than enjoined the practice.” I have not expressed any opinion, whether any such injunction is to be found in any other part of the Sanlitá of the Rigveda, or of the Sanhitás of the White or Black Yajush, or the Sámaveda. That is quite a different question, although, as the topic is started by the Rájá. I may venture to intimate an opinion, that the burning of a widow will not be found even alluded to in the genuine text, the Sanhitá, of either of the three principal Vedas. Whatever may be the antiquity of the rite, and that it is of long standing is not to be disputed, I suspect its origin is later than the Sanhitá, or primary Vedic period. I have now translated, although not yet published, nearly the whole of the Súktas, or hymns, the primitive portions of the Rigveda, and have yet found no notice of any such ceremony: the prohibition which would imply the existence of the rite, is matter of inference only; the direction, that the widow is to be led away from the proximity of her deceased husband, does not necessarily imply that she was to depart from his funeral pile, and there is no term, in the text, that indicates such a position.
In the course of my translation of the Rigveda, I have had a great number of occasions to refer to the printed texts of the Vájasaneyi Sanhita, of the Yajurveda, published by Professor Weber, of the Sámaveda printed by the late Mr. Stevenson and Professor Benfey, and I do not remember to have met with any
